AME releases white paper on revitalizing the manufacturing economy

To help manufacturers successfully navigate the postpandemic economy, the Association for Manufacturing Excellence (AME), Rolling Meadows, Ill., has published a white paper titled “A Manufacturing Marshall Plan.” The paper maps out how companies can prevent postpandemic supply chain disruptions, advance their manufacturing productivity, and reskill workforces.

“A Manufacturing Marshall Plan” advocates for reshoring, nearshoring, and LeanShoring; an increased focus on Industry 4.0 innovations; and enhanced educational and training offerings to create a stronger workforce. These three actions will provide companies and their communities with a distinct competitive advantage while also boosting productivity and improving sustainable resiliencein a fast-changing competitive manufacturing world, according to AME.

The white paper recommends that a switch to a more robust domestic supply chain and advanced manufacturing base could reduce the dependence on the increasingly fractured global supply system.

Offshore supply chains cause long-distance transportation, increased communications obstacles, unpredictable delivery times resulting in the loss of manufacturing capacities, and increased environmental pollution. As a result, reshoring and nearshoring—moving supply chain production to domestic or nearly domestic facilities—are gaining acceptance.

In response to current and future demands and to prevent future supply chain disruptions and takeovers from global competitors, companies must consider undergoing a supply chain renaissance, according to the white paper. To do this, they will have to implement new operational strategies and technologies, and the white paper discusses several resources for the establishment of these redeveloped domestic supply chains.

Manufacturers must also increase productivity, efficiency, speed, and quality to maintain competitiveness. By pairing a connected environment of data, people, processes, services, systems, and IoT-enabled industrial assets with the generation and use of actionable data, manufacturers can realize smart industries and ecosystems that foster innovation and collaboration. Unfortunately, Industry 4.0 creates additional demands for millions of new skilled jobs.

As the current workforce undergoes generational changes precipitated by retiring baby boomers, factories are evolving from the preautomation plants of the past to the smart factories of the future. Workers in smart factories, according to the paper, require digital fluency, technological savvy, and data analytics know-how.

The white paper states that the development of a skilled workforce begins with motivating a higher quantity and quality of recruits and that the demise of vocational education at the high school level has bred a skills shortage in manufacturing today. To close the growing skills gap, groups of employers, community colleges, workforce agencies, intermediaries, youth programs, labor organizations, and policy experts are advancing apprenticeship and work-based learning strategies—outlined in the white paper—as workforce development and talent solutions for U.S. businesses.

As the manufacturing industry moves into its “new normal,” failure to reshore, nearshore, or LeanShore manufacturing jobs; enhance industrial innovation; and reskill the North American workforce leaves the continent susceptible to future supply chain disruptions and economic uncertainty. The three steps outlined in the white paper provide a start for manufacturers to prevent such supply chain disruptions in the future.